“Harvesters from Beyond” are large treasure seeking aliens crossing the void into our world (or any Otherworld the heroes might be exploring) wearing massive, armoured “deep sea diving” encounter suits. As you might imagine, they are bloody terrifying in game as they are like tanks and very difficult to put down.
I did them in different shades of metal as I don’t really like my minis being competely identical even though they are identical in game. I painted these to be dark and menacing, so I kept the “eye buds” or lights or ports or whatever they are meant to be black , like a spider’s eyes. Said eye buds are getting a coat of gloss varnish after I get round to spraying them with the usual matt varnish I use.
I expect the makers have played Bioshock as well.
Harvesters from Beyond
large enemies from the expansion of the same name for
Shadows of Brimstone
Flying Frog Productions
HIPS plastic
40mm bases
Painted so far this month: 35/31 target surpassed
Painted so far this year: 193 / 365. Just 172 to go
Mr. Blonde: Yeah, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. I told ’em not to touch the alarm… but they touched it. If they hadn’t done what I told ’em not to do, they’d still be alive.
Mr Blue, Mr Brown, Mr White, Mr Pink, Mr Blonde and Mr Orange. Those are the only names they know each other by. They are gathered to perform a heist, let us just hope none of them are undercover deputies that already have told the law about their plans to rob the diamond store…
What to do with six identical western bandit models? Go Reservoir Dogs. The black suits turned into black dusters and hats, their colourful names became shirts, facial kerchief/mask/whatever it is called and the ring detail on their hats.
Now they are so much more interesting as individual gang members rather than just some random cowboys gone bad.
Well, to me at least.
The Bandits
from the Frontier Town Expansion for
Shadows of Brimstone
HIPS plastic
30mm bases
Painted so far this month: 32/31 target surpassed
Painted so far this year: 190 / 365. Just 175 to go
Taking up some of the slack on Shadows of Brimstone, next up is the Scourge Rats and their three-burrowed nest.
These are small enemies, and as such, there are a lot of them.
A dozen of the little blighters, to be precise. The Scourge Rats are mutated by the darkstone making them them big mutant monster rats much larger than normal rats, and with two tails a piece and a back ridge of poisonous spines.
I chose to make mine zombie mutant monster plague rats, on account of details on the minis that I interpreted as wounds and open ribs. Alternatively the very blue eyes might be seen as your typical mutant warp-frenzied crazy shining through.
Each of the 12 rats has its very own different color combination!
I did them in four different base flesh colour variants and one each of those with black, grey, brown and tan fur respectively. Some detailing, red and purple gore and then a wash with a mix of army painter quickshade strong tone and green tone (the mix ratio being a small puddle of the first and a few drops of the second…)
When dry I did the mouths and eye cavities in black before giving them all a very light drybrush with reaper MSP vampiric skin, before dotting in some teeth with the same vampric skin. A bit of Vallejo Game Colour Magic Blue topped with and old Gamecraft Turquoise (which is a very light shade) in teh eyes, some old Hobby Games Products (same paint as the really old citadel) Emerald on the back spines and some reaper MSP Brains Pink for the tips of the noses.
The different base colours serve to individualize them, while using the same wash and detailing colours together with similar basing serves to tie them together as a cohesive unit.
These were prepped and based with 30mmx20mm oval bases from war-bases.co.uk long before I got my 3D printer, or else I would have printed lipped ovals for them as well.
In the game, the nest is not just window dressing, but an immobile XL enemy that can produce more scourge rats and as such poses a major threat to the heroes as they might suddenly get overwhelmed. The rats are fast and have very high initiative. An unwary hero can rapidly be nickled and dimed to death.
The nest is roughly 6x6cm and takes up four squares on the board.
The scourge rats expansion increases the available small type enemies to three.
Scourge Rats and Rat Nest
from the expansion of the same name for
Shadows of Brimstone
Flying Frog Productions
HIPS plastic
20x30mm oval MDF bases
Painted so far this month: 26/30 Just 4 to go
Painted so far this year: 184 / 365. Just 181 to go
Not content with making a massively large monstrous worm to harass the heroes, the makers of Shadows of Brimstone gave their worm the obligatory cthulhoid mass of tentacles sprouting out of it’s gigantic maw! Try stopping that with a six-shooter…
Nyah, Nyah, Nyah!
It’s big enough to stand on top of and ride over the dunes…
For some reason, it ended up mostly purple. I think the red should have been a bit more muted, towards brown. Maybe I’ll go back and give it a darkening wash or three to correct that redness. But for now, it’s done.
Also, this made me think of the movie “The Burrowers” a western horror monster-thingy. I liked it alot, and recommend it heartily. It is not for the faint of heart, what with being quite graphic and brutal in parts.
The Burrower
from the Burrower XXL Enemy Pack expansion
Shadows of Brimstone
Flying Frog Productions
HIPS plastic
There is no base as such, it is slightly more than 10cms across the bottom part.
Painted so far this month: 13/30 Just 17 to go
Painted so far this year: 171 / 365. Just 194 to go
Life happens, and I get into a funk loosing my painting mojo for weeks on end. It is the way of things.
So to get into the groove again, I decided to do some neglected bits, starting with the Doorways into Darkness portals from the expansion by that very same name for Shadows of Brimstone. After all, no dungeon crawler worth it’s salt will be caught dead without proper 3D-pieces for the doors or portals!
The down to Earth mineshaft portals, and
the extradimentional void portals. The alien writing in the ..ahem…locking chevrons of these demonic-looking Stargates probably read “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here” or some such.
Yes there are oil lamps on both sides of the mineshaft portals, but as I think they wouldn’t be lighted when the heroes bumble into the mines, I did not do any lighting effects. Yes that is the reason. Not that I am quite lazy these days. Nope not that at all.
Apart from the eight plastic portals, the Doorways into Darkness-expansion also includes a few good equipment cards, which are the only actual additions to the game itself in this expansion. The Portals themselves do not have any rules or special effects apart from (in my opinion dramatically) enhancing the look of the game layout on the table, and therefore enhancing the game experience itself. I certainly prefer to use them.
Doorways into Darkness
expansion for Shadows of Brimstone
Flying Frog Productions
HIPS plastic
Painted so far this month: 8 /30. Just 22 to go.
Painted so far this year: 166 / 365. Just 199 to go
These are from one of the three enemy expansion sets that were added to the KS as paid add ons in the pledge manager, as the stretch goals for them were only just not reached… so they made them anyway and charged extra for them.
As I wanted the lot, I added them, using some of the late minecart credit I got. The Trun Hunters were delivered in the wave 1.5 shipment, and are one of the few enemy types yet released that have a ranged attack, which certainly changes the dynamics of the game.
Anyhow, what’s not to love about bloody great big lizard aliens with scifi armour and blaster pistols?
and there are three of them in the set:
Since we all know what lizardlike aliens like to eat, we know exactly what they are hunting for, don’t we? I wonder which 80s TV show these minis remind me of?
Incidentially, this is where Shadows of Brimstone most markedly moves away from it’s Wild West starting point, passes through the Tentacular Horror Void of the Dungeon Dimensions and lands squarely in the Twilight Zone of Sci Fi Mash-Up country! Pew Pew! Even more so than the WW1 type Trederran Raiders, or even the wintery Targa Otherworld where the ancient robotic guardians are stirring…Yea, verily, the void portals lead not only to other places, but also other times.
Trun Hunters
Shadows of Brimstone Enemy Set
Flying Frog Productions
HIPS plastic
40mm bases
Painted so far this month: 17
Painted so far this year: 17 / 365. Just 348 to go!
Recently, There was a second Kickstarter campain for the game series Shadows of Brimstone, to fund a “third base set” set in Feudal Japan, complete with expansions featuring tentacled and/or undead horror versions of traditional Japanese monsters and characters such as Samurai, Ninjas, Tengu, Kitsune, Oni and such like up to an including the massive Sho-Riu the Dragon King! Woot!
Needless to say, I am again stoked for Shadows of Brimstone, and with all the wave 1.5 goodness being prepped and ready to go, what have I been waiting for?
Good question. I fall in to the trap of “too much to do, what to do, what to do?” yet again, casting about just doing this and that, starting something here, abandoning something there…
Yeah, So.
Shadows of Brimstone has released “Caverns of Cynder” as the first complete Otherworld Expansion beyond the two game sets. The expansion includes boards, cards and rules to play in the molten, burning Cynder otherword, including 3 miniatures of a new Large enemy type, the Lava Men.
I think I am getting better at doing a burning/lava paint job.
I start with white all over. Then a heavy bright yellow drybrush, followed by golden yellow, then thinnish dark pink (Which sounds strange, but try it! The pink blends in and looks excellent on this!), followed by a dark reddish brown and topped with black. Each layer of drybrushing slightly lighter then the last, getting a magnificent gradient effect. This works really well when the minis has details to match.
The paint job looks bad until the last couple colours are put down, when suddenly wham!
Also it takes no time at all!
Some fitting music I like to listen to:
Caverns of Cynder repurposes two of the Swamps of Death base set monsters, to be the Souls of the Damned (The Hungry Dead) ghosts of dead adventurers that I painted a few weeks ago, and the Lava Bats (Hell Bats). Luckily I got an extra set of minis as a part of the KS minecart pledge:
The paint job works really well…but if the minis don’t have particularily deep details, especially not made to look like lava, not so much:
(this is also the case when I cannot be arsed to apply myself, and just slop the paint on really fast like with these)
I don’t really think these turned out all that well. They just look messy, and the tounges of blue flames did not work at all, the gradient just not there. groan. Oh well, can’t win ’em all. Not bothering to redo these, they are after all perfectly servicable.
Lava Men
Shadows of Brimstone: Caverns of Cynder Otherworld Expansion
